How Learning Works
The path from a word you selected while reading to a card that comes back on a schedule.
Read Frog has two halves. The extension translates what you are reading. The web app at readfrog.app keeps what you looked up and brings it back later, spaced out over days and weeks.
This page is the map of the second half. Each step links to the page that covers it in full.
The loop
Select a word while reading. The selection toolbar appears over your selection on any page where the extension is running.
Run a Custom AI Action. An action is a fixed prompt with named output fields, so the same kind of selection always comes back in the same shape — term, definition, example sentence, difficulty. See Custom AI Actions.
Save the result to a notebase. A notebase is a table that lives in your account. The action's output fields are mapped onto the notebase's fields, and one save becomes one note. See Save from the Extension.
A card template turns those fields into a card. The template decides which fields you see first and which ones are the answer. Each note gets one card per template. See Card Templates.
Review on a schedule. Recall the answer, reveal it, and say how it went. Read Frog decides when that card comes back. See The Review Session.
What needs an account
Translation does not. Page translation, video subtitles, input translation and the selection toolbar all work with no account, using your own provider keys.
Everything in the loop above does, because notes, cards and review history are stored on the server so they follow you between browsers and devices.
| Step | Account |
|---|---|
| Running a Custom AI Action | Only if it uses Read Frog's built-in AI rather than your own key |
| Creating a notebase | Yes |
| Saving a result into a notebase | Yes — the same account in the extension and on readfrog.app |
| Card templates and review | Yes |
The free plan holds 20 notes in total across all of your notebases, which is also what caps how many cards you can build from them.
Where things live
- Notebases, notes, card templates and review: readfrog.app/home
- The connection from an action to a notebase: the extension's options page, under Custom AI Actions
- Review counts and memory growth across every notebase: the Statistics page on readfrog.app
- Daily limits and target retention: Actions → Options on a notebase row, covered in Study Settings